Robots are used to cost-effectively perform complex, hazardous, and repetitive tasks not preferred by humans. Robots play an important role in reducing cost, improving worker health and safety, augmenting product quality, and increasing overall productivity. In agriculture, the opportunities for robot-enhanced productivity are immense—and the robots are appearing on farms in various guises and in increasing numbers. Precision agriculture calls for highly developed systems to perform traditional farming tasks. Current systems provide an operator with assisted navigation via a satellite position signal. This assistance is accomplished using a device such as a lightbar to indicate a direction the operator should drive to maintain a straight line to travel.
The lightbar includes a row of lights or light emitting diodes (LEDs) which interface to a GPS receiver to provide parallel swath guidance. The lightbar consisting of a row of LEDs denotes the vehicle's deviation to the left or right of the swath by respectively illuminating a proportional number of LEDs to the left or right of a central on-course LED. The lightbar's internal guidance computer receives the serial GPS position data and displays a steering indicator to indicate whether or not the vehicle is close to an imaginary A-B line the driver is attempting to drive down, thereby allowing the driver to determine correct steering adjustments. One such lightbar system is model number Starlink LB-3 sold by Starlink Inc., Austin, Tex.
The transfer of global positioning system (GPS) technologies to civilian industry has greatly assisted in meeting the challenges presented by today's precision agricultural needs. Using GPS systems, accurate and highly reliable satellite-based positioning information, which typically achieves less than one meter accuracy by utilizing differential GPS position corrections transmitted from fixed base stations, is provided to operators, for example though moving map displays. Such information allows for precise navigation and guidance. Systems utilizing GPS technology have been used in the past to assist in the aerial and terrestrial application of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, etc. However, such systems have generally been limited in their capabilities.
Current navigation systems fail to have an ability to automatically control the vehicle with equipment mounted thereon. During peak operations, the operator may be required to oversee a plurality of tasks including operating the vehicle. Assisted steering systems were used in the past to relieve an operator from driving related tasks. The capability to perform parallel contour swathing while minimizing “skip”, and “overlap” is preferred for cost-effective crop management within precision agriculture. The complexity of operating heavy equipment coupled with other tasks including steering the vehicle to a light bar indicator may be overwhelming to an operator. In a known navigation system, heading correction data is used to guide to, or maintain a vehicle on, a predetermined course.
It is difficult to approximate human steering. For example, a human will sometimes turn a steering wheel rapidly and sometimes slowly for the same turn depending on vehicle kinematics, such as speed.
It would be desirable to retrofit an automatic steering system to an existing vehicle without the need to tap in to or modify the vehicle's hydraulic systems.